The Germans have committed many more indefensible crimes than the
military execution of the kind-hearted nurse who had helped
war-prisoners to escape. They have murdered hundreds of women who had
committed no offence whatever against their military rules. But though
not the worst of their misdeeds, this has probably been the stupidest.
It gained us almost as many recruits as the sinking of the _Lusitania_,
and it made the whole world understand--what is unhappily the
truth--that the German is wholly destitute of chivalry. He knows indeed
that people of other nations are affected by this sentiment; but he
despises them for it. Woman is the weaker vessel; and therefore,
according to his code, she must be taught to know her place, which is to
cook and sew, and produce "cannon-fodder" for the Government. Readers of
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche will remember the advice given by those
philosophers for the treatment of women. Nietzsche recommends a whip. It
never occurred to German officialdom that the pedantic condemnation of
one obscure woman, guilty by the letter of their law, would stir the
heart of England and America to the depths, and steel our soldiers to
further efforts against an enemy whose moral unlikeness to ourselves
becomes more apparent with every new phase in the struggle.